Icarus in Seoul—when your wings melt

About the only thing left is the dog, right dog? Dog? Get back here!—The disgrace of Hwang Woo Suk is now complete and the story gets sadder. It turns out now, he faked his human stem cell cloning experiments, embarrassing not only himself but his country and two science journals. He could produce no evidence to his university that he did what he said he did. It wasn't a question of exaggerating; he faked it.

His announcements, published in Science and Nature galvanized biology and made him a national hero, bordering on rock star status. His country was so proud of him; Little Korea passes them all. [I'm very fond of Korea and the Koreans. I feel their pain.] But what happens raises some really uncomfortable issues not discussed elsewhere—which is why I blog, I guess.

I've written here before that American science, if not also the American Empire, is in decline, that other countries are now doing serious work that often is ignored by American media. It was the reason part of me wanted to believe him. But while I was reading Hwang's papers and the reaction to his claims I was taken by two things. One, with stem cell research a matter of some controversy here, incredibly, many of us wanted very badly for Hwang's work to be real and true, and perhaps some of the coverage was biased that way. We were cheering him on, in part because many of us believe the field can do good things for people, and partly a reaction to the restrictions on the research forced on us by the morally obtuse—look, even Korea is ahead of us because of the ignorant meddling! The second thing that came to me was the little alarm in the back of my head wondered how a veterinarian in a small Asian country can do this when no one else seems able to. Turns out he couldn't.

I long ago learned to trust that little alarm in the back of my head. All good reporters learn that. I should have paid attention. So should we all. Science journalism does so little real probing. It is hindsight now but the signs of problems were all over the place, including the suspicious similarities in the illustrations of the cell lines. And, I'm sorry to say, the simple unlikelihood he really could have done that. I feel sorry for the Koreans and for Hwang.

Hwang also claimed to have cloned a dog. Whether he did or not remains to be seen. Don't bet on it

[Photo by Reuters]

Scorpio rising

I've had it with these Virgos, man. Give me a Pisces anytime—The Washington Post, in a move I would consider beyond brilliant, has posted on its web site the astrological signs for members of the U.S. Senate and how they voted on the cloture motion for the defense appropriations act, in other words, to block the bill containing drilling in the arctic wildlife preserve, the brainstorm of the idiot from Alaska. We Geminis did not come out as well as I would have hoped, but what can you do. Click on the headline to get the chart, and a bow to the Post for having a sense of humor. And to Carol for passing it on.

The decline of Western Civilization —Part V, or Barbie is toast

First, we’ll put Barbie in a wet t-shirt, then Ken is going to put her over his knees and spank her—The latest from the world of abnormal psychology (in other words, pre-pube girls) comes from a study from the University of Bath in Britain. It seems that many young girls like to mutilate and torture their Barbie dolls. A study of 100 children, aged 7 to 11, came up with a number of girls who got violent with their dolls. They hated the dolls so much they tortured them, removing hair, decapitating them, burning them, and best of all, sticking them in microwaves. Why, you may ask? “When we asked the groups of junior school children about Barbie, the doll provoked rejection, hatred and violence,” said Dr Agnes Nairn from the University of Bath’s School of Management. “The meaning of ‘Barbie’ went beyond an expressed antipathy; actual physical violence and torture towards the doll was repeatedly reported, quite gleefully, across age, school and gender.” One theory is that they have outgrown the dolls and thought it would be cool to terminate them violently. Outgrowing Barbie, apparently is a rite of passage. Mattel, which makes the dolls, said the study was too small to mean anything. It would seem to me, the best thing to do would be to dress them up in something really ugly and play rap music to them for hours at a time. Even those dolls would surrender. How about a double mastectomy?


Well, if we cut Barbie’s hair real short, put her in slacks and a tight bra, we’d have Barbie Dyke—So there is an alternative. Lesbian dolls. If you go to Dykesdolls on the web, here, you will see a splendid line of lesbian action figures. It doesn’t say what the action is but nothing would surprise me. The line includes the butch Bobbie doll, with “denim jeans and boots...all boy on the outside but woman underneath." And there is the Baby Dyke line too. I don’t know what any of this means. A gay Ken would flesh out the picture, don't you think? [With thanks to reader Larry M.]

The Christian War on Christmas

This has nothing to do with science and medicine, the usual fodder for this blog, but I've wanted to say it for years and it's my blog!

There is indeed a “war” against Christmas. By Christians. The evangelicals and the Fox commentators ought to be reminded of the sagacious Pogo, who exclaimed that he had met the enemy and “he is us.” It is the Christians who have become the enemies of Christmas, certainly in the U.S.

I always thought this was a good time of the year not to be a Christian. I don’t have to be offended by what they’ve done to my most important religious holiday. “They” are not Jews or Moslems or secularists. They are Christians.

Some historical background would be useful here. Christmas doesn’t really coincide with the birth of Jesus. If the New Testament is accurate, he was born in the spring. Remember the shepherds and lambs? There are no lambs in December. The holiday in December derived from the pagan worship of the winter solstice. The Yule tree is one of the pagan symbols, which is why the Puritans banned Christmas trees. In fact, they banned Christmas for several generations because for the holiday’s pagan origins.

Christmas itself was not always the major Christian holiday it is now. Easter was more important. It became a big deal during the Victorian era, at least in the English-speaking world. Most of the Christmas carols, which sound so ancient, actually were written in the 19th century. Americans tend to give credit to Clement Moore and his poem about the night before Christmas, written in 1822, which morphed St. Nicolas into Santa Claus, the holiday’s prime icon—a jolly old guy who drove a sleigh of reindeer and dropped down the chimneys of homes—millions of them simultaneously—to bring presents to the families. You see a lot more pictures of Santa than Jesus these days.

But a more likely fashioner of the modern Christmas was Charles Dickens whose A Christmas Carol (1843)—one of several Christmas stories he wrote, created the aesthetics of our current holiday. Think of how many images of Christmas come in Victorian dress. Throw in a little Currier & Ives, and you have our idealized holiday.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. Indeed, it’s quite lovely, actually, especially the music. But that’s the ideal. It turns out Christmas is nothing like that at all.

It has become a materialistic orgy with the Jesus part just noise.

When I was a kid, the rule was that the Christmas season began the weekend after Thanksgiving. Now the ads and the decorations begin before Halloween and the ads come in torrents. Christmas has become not a religious holiday, but a commercial event, the biggest of the year. For many businesses, your profit comes in November and December or it comes not at all. I stay out of malls in November and December because the goyim are out in droves shopping and dropping credit cards.

What the hell does any of that have to do with the purported birth of the messiah. Ain’t my messiah, but if he is yours, why aren’t you offended? You cannot name a product that doesn’t have a Christmas ad, sometimes invoking the melodies of carols to sell stuff. From celebration of what you believe is the most important event in history we get a holiday of consumption, materialism and bad taste.

It wasn’t the ACLU that did it. We Jews don’t care what you’ve done to your holiday and I doubt many Moslems do either.

Is there a war on Christmas? Yes, and Christmas lost. And Christians did it.

Oh, and Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy New Year. Don't bother me with Kwanza.

And, as my Christmas present to you all, the words of Walt Kelly:

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker 'n' too-da-loo!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloupe, 'lope with you!

Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarm bung-a-loo!

Dunk us all in bowls of barley,
Hinky dinky dink an' polly voo!
Chilly Filly's name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, woof, woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie!
Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, goof, goof!

The Kennedy boy is in the soup again—UPDATED

Look, they said it was real kimchi—Don Kennedy is in trouble again and this time it isn’t his fault. Kennedy is editor of Science magazine, about as prestigious a position as you can have in science. He came to the job after screwing up as president of Stanford and has done, by all accounts, a good job as head of America's most prestigious science publication. Now, it appears, he has been the victim of science fraud and he is in the spotlight again.

Background: I was science writer at Stanford when he was president, and I wrote the initial stories that began Stanford’s indirect cost scandal that eventually cost Kennedy his job. In brief, the university was charging everything from light bulbs to yachts and commodes to the government to do research, a practice that made doing research at Stanford so expensive that scientists started losing grants and the faculty was in an uproar. The practice began under Kennedy and when it exploded into the public—thanks to a slightly wacky whistle blower —Kennedy mishandled it. He never got control of the situation so we were getting surprised every day. He also made the mistake of forgetting you hire lawyers to give advice, not make decisions. Nonetheless, he was fired and to some extent, I’m told, he blames me partially. There goes my freelancing opportunities at Science.

Now for the present contretemps. The world has been agog at the exploits of a Korean veterinarian, Hwang Woo Suk, who claimed major advances in stem cell research and cloning. His work was published in Science. Hwang has become a national hero in Korea. In recent weeks, there have been questions about the ethics of his work and veracity of his claims. One colleague, Roh Sung Il, says Hwang faked photos in a claim that he created stem cells from 11 patients for an article in Science (an article I reported on this blog too, by the way). The stress has put Hwang in the hospital and it is apparently going to get worse. Things really fell apart when a coauthor of the Science paper, Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, an accomplished and well-respected researcher, asked Science to take his name off the paper. Schatten was listed last, the place reserved for the most important scientist. Schatten said he now had substantial doubts about the paper’s accuracy,” which is interesting since he signed off on it. Science refused because the paper had not been withdrawn, putting Kennedy on the spot. See Connie Holden's piece in Science here.

Today I got a call from a reporter at the New York Times who heard I had some bumpy experiences with Kennedy and the question was, did I know anything about Kennedy that could let me predict he would get into a jam at Science. The answer was no. I don’t think he did anything wrong. He got an important paper that passed peer review and was coauthored by an established scientist of unquestioned repute. What the hell was he supposed to do with it? Nature also accepted an article from Hwang on cloning a dog and no one has asked if there was anything in that editor’s past that would warn of a problem. The referees on the Science paper asked for additional tests, which may have led to uncovering the problems. If Hwang did fake the research the worst that can be said is that the system worked. He got caught.

UPDATE—A panel at Hwang's university, Seoul National, has concluded that Hwang faked at least nine of the 11 stem cell lines he claimed to have produced and Hwang resigned. His downfall is particularly said because he had become a national hero in Korea, a Korean who was leading the field in science, attaining rock star fame in the country. "I sincerely apologize to the people for creating a shock and disappointment," he said. [AP photo above]

It wasn’t Kennedy’s fault that the stories were published. The papers will undoubtedly be withdrawn.

Virgins in space, Kirk on the web.

What if the tourists come and there is nothing to see?—Richard Branson, the rock ‘n roll entrepreneur is not a man to think small. He has just come to an agreement with the state of New Mexico to build a $225 million spaceport in the desert. What he or anyone else is going to do with a $225 million spaceport doesn’t seem clear. His company, Virgin Galactic, however, now has a waiting list of 38,000 people who have put down deposits on a seat on Virgin Galactic’s space ships, only Virgin Galactic doesn’t have any space ships. One hundred of them laid out $200,000 up front and Branson says they are going to boldly go up in 2008 or 2009. The spaceport, state officials, say will be largely underground near White Sands and Virgin will have a 20-year lease, paying $1 million for the first five years. Branson has a deal with Burt Rutan to build five spacecraft modelled after Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, the first privately manned rocket to reach space last year and the winner of the $10 million Ansari X prize. Meanwhile, Branson has something perhaps more serious in mind. He and a group of American investors are starting up a U.S. airline, Virgin America, to compete with JetBlue and Southwest. It will be based in San Francisco and already has funding and an order for more than 30 Airbus 320s. They will fly before his spaceships will.

Jim, Jim. What the hell are we going to do with all those consonants? —Star Trek fans have a treat in store if they click here. They will go to the most viewed movie in Finland, a full-length movie in Finnish with English subtitles made by students and amateurs that is surprisingly professional. OK, not profession. Not amateurish. OK, not not amateurish but surprisingly decent. Whatever. It’s funny and it's called "Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning," and it has been downloaded more than 3 million times since the beginning of October. That’s more people than those who went to the theatre to see Finland’s most popular movie, “The Unknown Soldier” (or, as you know it better, “Tuntematon Sotilas.”) It’s fun to watch and there is a lesson to the film industry in there somewhere.

Water horrors—collateral damage

Will that be red or white wine with your sludge?—The collateral damage to Hurricane Katrina knows no limits. I know people are homeless and more than 1,000 died, but one must add to the tragedy. The wine cellar at Brennan’s Restaurant, one of the best in the world, is gone. Vinegar. Slurry. Think of 35,000 bottles, including some of the best wines in the world (oh, how about a 1870 Lafite Rothschild?) broiling in the heat of August. When the electricity went out, the wine cellar—two floors of the circa 1795 building—was at the mercy of the heat. The wine was usually kept at 58 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature rose to 120 with the power out, cooking the stuff, or at best making cooking wine out of it. Brennan’s is just one of almost a dozen restaurants owned by the Brennan family, all of which are probably down for months. No more Bananas Foster. (They have branches and I was a denizen of the Houston shop during the space program). All are a major loss, but the wine cellar at the flagship is a serious stuff.

We’re doing swordfish today so you can throw the damned tuna out—No doubt Brennan’s and the other sea food restaurants get their catch as the result of the modern fishing industry, which brings us to more collateral damage. According to a report from U.S. and Canadian scientists, the modern fishing industry is amazingly inefficient and wasteful. They regularly toss out 22% of what they catch in their nets. In an article published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, they say the Gulf of Mexico has the worst fishermen. The problem is that the shrimp nets, which are dragged across the ocean floor, scoop up tons of what is called bycatch, about a billion pounds of it, which is then dumped back into the water. They discard four times as many fish as they keep. In one of the great analogies of the week, one of the scientists said the bycatch would fill every bathtub in a city of 1.5 million people. How he figured that, I don’t know, but it is impressive. Besides noncommercial species (jelly fish, for instance) the bycatch includes whatever the boats were not out to get. The figures are for 2002 and representatives of the fishing industry say they are doing better now, but it’s as good as it’s going to get.

A Titanic struggle on the telephone while debating evolution

No, Muscatine is not a bad Italian wine —The next town you hear from in the great debate over “intelligent design” could be Muscatine, Iowa. According to the Muscatine Journal, the school board of the small, 22.000 population city on the banks of the Mississippi, thinks that students should be aware of ID and plan on taking the matter up at a meeting within the next two years. Ann Hart, vice president of the school board said there was no thought to removing evolution from the curriculum—it is, after all, science—but that “intelligent design should be brought up because a lot of people believe in it, and otherwise, kids aren’t going to understand it as well as they should.” The first point, that a lot of people believe in it, is debatable. The second isn’t. If taught properly—that it is anti-evolution dressed up as a scientific theory—would be a good thing, and last about 10 minutes. “I would hope,” she said, “it wouldn’t become a big issue.” Good luck.

It was said when the great ship went down. Husbands and wives—little children lost their lives—oh it was sad when the great ship went down—In most books as well as the movie, the R.M.S. Titanic hit an iceberg, broke apart and sank. In the movie it looks like everyone had time for high drama, and the designer says it will sink in about an hour. The bottom section of the hull broke free, the bow and stern split, with the bow sinking first and the stern 20 minutes later. Apparently, that isn't so. The stern, as depicted in the film, is where all the survivors fled for temporary safety before it too filled with water and plunged into the frigid water. In the original exploration of the wreck, Robert Ballard never found the bottom section. Now others have and it gives a new picture of what happened that night in 1912— a more merciful death. The stern sank after only five minutes. The bottom part of the hull was found a third of a mile from the stern in two pieces and the researchers were able to use that to create a new scenario. Ballard was unimpressed with the discovery. “They found a fragment. Big deal.” [The thing that bothered me most about the movie is that the water was lethally cold and people who jumped or fell into it would have been dead in a few minutes. In the film, they had time for all kinds of histrionics and adventures, all quite impossible in the wintery North Atlantic. On the other hand, the movie had Kate Winslett and the ship didn’t.] By the way, Canadian researchers report that the wreck will disintegrate by 2028.

Well, your honor, I was multitasking and just didn't see the truck—In the category of what else is new, researchers at Oregon State University have discovered that talking on the telephone is distracting if you are driving. Duh. Research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology [not on the website yet], came to an obvious conclusion, but the reason why phones and driving are a bad combination is kind of interesting. Research at NASA has shown that there just are limits to multitasking like this, and the reason is an “information bottleneck.” Our tiny brains simply can’t handle all the input. With practice, we can get better, but only just so. We aren't bright enough. Some people are better than others. Young people who play video games are best at it. This fits in with other research that shows that most people on the telephone while driving, drive like old people. They drive and react more slowly. And oh yes, the most common accident is a rear-end collision.

Agencies behaving badly, pewter mugs and splashing Martians

Just take two pills and call me in the morning, presuming you are still alive in the morning—The federal Food and Drug Administration was once the gold standard by which government agencies were judged for efficiency and caution. The lives of millions of Americans depended on it. A new study by Consumer Reports, however, documents just how badly the FDA has fallen. CR has identified 12 relatively common prescription drug types linked to serious side effects—some of them potentially fatal—that were approved by the FDA without proper attention. Many are still being advertised and lack a useful warning. CR identified several reasons for the lapse in effectiveness.

• Rush to approve—the agency had tight deadlines, insufficient data and not enough time to make good decisions. Scientists complain their bosses pressured them into prematurely approving some.
• Lack of power—the FDA, thanks to Congress, lacks the power to compel companies to do proper studies before approval, force doctors to report adverse reactions, or dictate warning labels. It assesses drug side effects after they erupt but then can’t do much about them.
• Hidden risks—some companies withhold information from the FDA that might limit the sales of the drugs.

For a list of the drugs, click here.

When the final storm comes in a pewter mug—Ludwig von Beethoven was an unpleasant fellow. He had no friends. He did not bathe. He had a vile temper–indeed, as he grew older he was more than a little mad. Oh, yes, and he was deaf. He could conduct his Ninth Symphony but he never actually heard the orchestra. One of the great mysteries is why he was the way he was and why he died in misery at the age of 56, depriving the world of about 10 years of, well, Beethoven. Rearchers at Argonne National Laboratory, probably have solved the mystery. Ludwig von died of lead poisoning. They took six hairs, known to be from Beethoven's head and a few pieces of his skull and put it all through the Advanced Photon Source, which shoots particles around a loop at 99.999 percent of the speed of light. The result, Beethoven had 100 times more lead atoms in him than normal. (Incidentally, he had very little mercury in him, which seems to debunk the canard that the great man died of syphilis, which would have been treated with mercury.) The lead might also explain his really bad behavior toward the end. It's not clear if the deafness came from the poisoning. Where did the lead come from? Unknown, but it was common to drink with lead or pewter mugs and Beethoven did like his drink. The skull fragments? They were passed down through the family of an Austrian physician, who apparently coped them from the dead composer. Bad.

I’d like a single-malt scotch and some Martian ice cubes, stir don’t mix—If there is one thing future human visitors to Mars won’t have to worry about, its finding something to drink. While scientists now believe the place was never a water wonderland despite all the evidence it once had surface water, they now think any water on the surface quickly froze or evaporated. But research reported at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco seems to indicate there is lots of water still on the Red Planet, buried in the dirt and gathered around the poles. That raises the possibility that microbes have found a conducive place to live. They won’t make a Spielberg movie out of them, but it’s a start. The ice cap may be as much as a mile thick, something like the ice sheets during the terrestrial Ice Age. The water may even be pure enough to drink, which is more than can be said for water in lots of places on Earth. Much of the research, incidentally, came from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express satellite that began orbiting Mars in 2003.

Kabbalah and evolution—Madonna not withstanding—UPDATED

"The theory of evolution accords with the secrets of Kabbalah better than any other theory. Evolution follows a path of ascent and thus provides the world with a basis for optimism. How can one despair, seeing that everything evolves and ascends? When we penetrate the inner nature of evolution, we find divinity illuminated in perfect clarity. Ein Sof [the essence or light of God] generates, actualizes potential infinity."

From The Essential Kabbalah; the heart of Jewish mysticism, by Daniel C. Matt.

Horny writers, rebellious writers and fat asses—you read it here first

New rule: Croatian terrorists and drug companies shouldn't hire writers.—The guys and gals at Big Pharma, the pirates of capitalism, had a bright idea. In order to deter Americans from buying drugs in Canada, which has price controls and a moral health care system, they hired two people to write a novel in which Croatian Muslim terrorists contaminate Canadian drugs in order to kill Americans. I’m not making this up. But the gang who can’t shoot straight, still can’t shoot straight. The novel, tentatively called The Spivak Conspiracy, was the idea of Mark Barondess, a Hollywood divorce lawyer (need I say more?) who took it to PhRMA, the lobbying group for the drug industry, which willingly produced $300,000 for the project. According to Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lazar in Slate, the scheme backfired. They found a publisher, a writer (Julie Chrystyn) and an editor. The editor was Jason Blair, the disgraced New York Times reporter (great minds think alike), who was promptly fired after four days (he's not having a nice life). A lawyer, Kenin Spivak, joined Chrystyn in producing the manuscript. But when Barondess saw the finished manuscript, he rejected it. The writers blame an executive at PhRMA, who wanted more polemics and wanted to dumb it down to attract women readers. (I repeat, I’m not making this up). So the project got killed and the writers were offered $100,000 to shut up about it. But they didn’t accept. They rewrote the book and it will be published next month. The new villain? Why a giant drug company, of course. It’s called The Karasik Conspiracy.

Oh, and by the way. The drug companies have, for years, justified the exorbitant prices they charge American consumers as the cost of doing the research that produces new drugs. As Brownlee and Lenzer point out, a new study in the British Medical Journal reports that there is no relationship between what drug companies charge and their ability to do research. “Lower prices do not lead to less research.” Non-American companies “fully recover their research and development costs, maintain high profits, and sell drugs at substantially lower prices than in the U.S."

I must have sex with you, I’m a writer—Where was this great line when I needed it? Psychologists at the University of Newcastle on Tyne and the Open University in Britain (the Brits can be counted on for pertinent research) report that creative geniuses really do lead active sex lives and may need it. Artists and writers screw twice as many partners as, say, lawyers and insurance salesmen. Their creativity acts as a sexual magnet. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they suffer from higher rates of depression. The study is the first to tackle the reputation that us creative folks are more sexually active than the rest of you slugs. They found that artists and poets had between 4 and 10 sexual partners while, say, your average CPA had only three on average. It was true of both men and women. "It could be that very creative types lead a bohemian lifestyle and tend to act more on sexual impulses and opportunities, often purely for experience's sake, than the average person would," said Daniel Nettle, one of the researchers. It’s all for the sake of creativity. Have some Madeira, my dear.

Get your fat butt on the table while I get the long needle—The increasing obesity of Westerners, particularly Americans, is as much a health horror as an aesthetic one. It has forced coffin makers to redesign wider coffins, airlines to charge double for really fat people who want to fly coach, and clothing manufacturers to expand their offerings in multiple ways.According to a study at an Irish hospital, reported at the Radiological Society of North America, the standard-sized needles used to inject drugs into buttocks muscles aren’t long enough. They can’t get through the layers of fat to deliver the drugs. In a test of 25 women, the needles failed to deliver in 23 of them; the women ended up with the drug in buttock fat, not in the muscle, meaning they did not get the correct dosage. Doctors use the buttocks for drug delivery because muscles have plentiful blood vessels to carry the drugs around the body and the buttocks have few nerves, bones and major blood vessels that can be damaged by a needle. The drugs that end up in the fat just sit there and can cause irritation or infection. And they don't improve anyone's looks. So if you want to have sex with one of those horny writers above, you girls know what to do about it. We have standards.